The art of creating good malt out of bad barley has not yet been discovered.
Craft Malt Conference – Summary
Wow! What an exciting few days for the craft malt community! Three solid days of technical presentations and happy hours all done from the comfort of home. I’ll admit that I had some concerns about the digital fatigue factor of a multi-day event housed exclusively online.
Inside the Matrix….Beta Glucan and Arabinoxylan
𝛃-glucan is a glucose polymer that is found in the cell walls of the endosperm. 𝛃-glucan along with another non-starch carbohydrate called arabinoxylan (or pentosan) comprise more than 70% of the molecular weight of these cells.
High 𝛃-glucan levels in finished malt can lead to a laundry list of headaches for brewers, so it lands squarely on the shoulders of the maltster to manage the degradation of these polymers.
» Read more about: Using a CoA for Malting and Brewing – Pt. 2 »
The beer community has been asking (begging?) since 2015 for more and different craft lagers to enter the market. Looking back at 2020, I think we got there!
Was it COVID that pushed the industry to make the final leap? The ability to store for longer periods of time definitely made sense given the volatility of retail in the early spring and summer.
Was it hop fatigue? Not likely, the dominance of the IPA continues to define the space,
Planning for a successful batch of malt or brew day starts with a Certificate of Analysis (CoA for short) which provides a tremendous amount of information about the malt you will be working with. In the early days, these laboratory analyses were cost prohibitive for us….costing upwards of $300 a sample! Thanks to the good people at Hartwick College and Montana State University we are able to test every batch we produce.
What does this mean for our customers?
» Read more about: Using a CoA for Malting and Brewing – Pt. 1 »
I’ll be honest, I was not a fan of smoke beers. To me, they all came in one flavor….campfire. I could pick it out of whatever I was drinking and just couldn’t get past it. Never did I go back for a second pint.
With that as the backdrop, I helped launch our smoked malt program a few months back. This move was driven primarily to support product requests from our distillery customers.
It all comes back to geology
– Brian Simpson
When Brian and I worked together as environmental consultants, that quote was a common refrain. Brian, being a geologist, always took smug satisfaction in the fact that his chosen field had a significant impact on mine (stream and wetland restoration). In short, you have to understand what is going on underneath the surface before you can restore your target ecosystem.
» Read more about: Exploring the Terrior of Southern Barley »
Over the past 6 months, we’ve worked with several of our customers across the Southeast to brew beers that give back to those in the service industry that have been impacted by COVID-19. A small gesture that we hope demonstrates our support for the community. These projects have kept us connected and energized during these trying times.
We plan to keep things rolling as we head into the next phase of the pandemic.
We’ve heard it since the beginning…..it can’t be local enough!
– Brent Manning
We’ve offered locally-sourced malt for almost a decade now. While this practice marks a notable improvement in the carbon footprint associated with producing craft beer and spirits, others want to take it one step further.
That is where contract (aka toll) malting enters the conversation. Toll malting allows our customers to bring grain from their family farm to the malt house and then back to the brewhouse or distillery,
» Read more about: Capturing the taste of home with contract malting »
Each crop year is distinctive and offers a teaching moment. Our intake process remains the same, the results are always different.
In previous years, we’ve seen warm, dry springs drive rapid growth and early harvests. Mother Nature delivered a long, cool spring across the Southeast this year. These conditions supported steady stand growth and maturation. This slow growth pushed harvest back to late June in some spots across our network.
In lagers, brewers ask the raw materials to do the heavy lifting.
All over the craft beer landscape, we are seeing a steady expansion and exploration of the many classic lager styles and I couldn’t be happier!
This Wet Hopped Kellerbier from DSSOLVR and Wooden Robot is my personal favorite combination at the moment.
This topic is always a fun one to have with our customers.